The Sixteenth Year Chasing The Cute Boy
by Hayasaka.Shion
Summary: Inspired by the Shizaya AMV '15 Years Chasing After A Cute Boy'. This is what might happen after those fifteen years.


A/N: Inspired by the Shizaya AMV: 15 Years Chasing After A Cute Boy, which made me cry myself to sleep. Any Shizaya fan, even if not a yaoi fan, should cry while watching it. Please do so before reading this.  
But this isn't a fanfic on the video, it's what happens after the fifteen years in the song. The time is the sixteenth year.

I watched on as the blank paper before me was filled in with letters, crammed together, confusingly close to each other, the ink almost looking like it was going to bleed together with the strength of my feelings.

Feelings that were all but overflowing from within me, all for one person: none other than the Orihara Izaya whom I hadn't valued while I still could.

And now it was too late, too late to do anything at all. Izaya was gone, and nothing I could do would bring him back. He was gone, somewhere far, far away, away from me... and it was all my fault.

If only I had told him everything before he died... if I had just taken the time to tell him how much I needed him... oh, God, what I wouldn't give to have him back for just a minute, just one moment to feel his body in my arms again, to smell his dizzying scent, to just feel him there...

The ink in the pen, after getting lighter and lighter finally ran out completely. I fumbled around on my desk, trying to find a spare one somewhere, because goddamn I needed to finish this letter.

A broken pencil met my fingers, and I decided it would have to do as I scratched out the words that I desperately wanted to convey to my beautiful love, say them to him and show him all the love I felt for him.

A sigh of relief escaped my lungs as I finally finished, my hands automatically folding up the letter and slipping it into an envelope, sticking on the stamp and pushing it onto the pile of all the other letters that I'd written during the week and which were waiting to be posted.

It's a habit by now.

Every week I'd go to your house, posting all the letters I'd written within those seven days. On an average, there were usually around fifteen or somewhere around that many letters waiting to be posted, and sometimes, if the desire to see something of you got really bad, I'd make it every two or three days.

I have my own special damn mailbox in your house by now.

Your parents try to throw them out, all those twenty thousand letters that I wrote out of my love for you, but your sisters don't let them. Thanks to those two, every single letter, the stamps and seals intact, are stuffed inside what was your room. I never go in there, it reminds me too much of you and your smell and I lose control way too fast to stop myself from breaking down. I don't really visit your grave, either, because, even after sixteen years, it's still unbelievable to me that you're dead.

You should be here, dammit, you should be here, irritating me out of my mind with your irritating smile and your cute face, you should be here with me, as we both grew old together, lived life together. That's all I wish for, that if only I could have taken your place, and given you a lease of life, I wanted to do that. I wanted to see you live, to learn how to love, I wanted you so bad, beside me.

We never kissed, or hugged, or did any of those other things that I want to do now when you were alive. But now that's all I want to do – crush your lips to mine, pull your body close to mine and feel your existence alongside mine. I can't get enough of thinking what it would have been like, if I had appreciated your worth while I could, if I had just told you, even once, a simple thank-you for being a friend to me. The best one I could ever ask for.

I pushed the chair back, forcing myself up on my feet as I retired back to my bed. I didn't have a job, because the money I made by my poetry was more than enough for me to live comfortably for the rest of my life.

Is that your gift? I wrote all those poems for you, is this your way of looking after me even if I can't do the same?

The tears came back to my eyes, slid down my face and dripped down on my shirt. I couldn't stop them, I was constantly crying about this ever since I got my memories back. My clothes hung limply on my body, the weight I'd lost more than apparent through the layers.

You probably wouldn't have wanted me to do this.

But I can't help it. I can't eat, it makes me want to throw up, I can't sleep, it makes me dream, I can't live, it's too empty without you.

I looked at the picture on my bedside, a picture of you, me, Kadota and Shinra that we took some time back in school. All four of us, fooling around, just having fun for the sake of it. Again I tore up, remembering all those times in high school that I just ignored you or tried to kill you. The regret lashing out as surely as a coarse rope on a bare back.

"Izaya, Izaya, Izaya…" I'm saying your name, or rather yelling it out, my tears sliding down my face faster than ever, my hands clutching the sides of my head as I wish so damn hand for the ten thousandth time that you were alive at this moment.

I'm so stupid…

I collapse on the bed, my face smothered by the pillow, my tears soaking the thin fabric through. Why did you have to die, Izaya, why you? Why couldn't it be someone else? Someone, anyone else, anyone would be fine, as long as it wouldn't be you! You weren't supposed to die! You were supposed to keep on living, keep on annoying the hell out of me, keep on slicing me up, beating me, bugging me, kissing me, hugging me, loving me…

My hands tremble as I reach out for the paper on the table, again the familiar desire to write filling my body and mind, and I scratch my own finger by accident, making it bleed, but the only reaction it evokes is me thinking it'd make a good pen.

It's nothing new, I keep wanting to write again and again, more and more often as the days pass, just wanting to express my feeling to you, feeling that if I just kept on writing all my letters would somehow reach you, my heart somehow find you, my hands somehow touch you.

This time my body breaks down on me before I can make the pencil touch the paper, but still I know I've got to do this, so I try, even lying down on my side I try to write, but for the first time I just can't think of what to write this time.

And then I see it.

You.

Before I know what I'm doing I've ran to you, I've taken you in my arms, I've touched you, I'm squeezing the damn life out of you but I can't help it, it really is you there.

I don't question the how or why of it; I'm just thanking whoever is listening that I finally get to see you one more time.

You're kinda looking like you're glowing from inside, like a lightbulb I suppose, for some reason, but I don't bother with that either. Even if you came back as a girl I wouldn't mind.

You're smiling, and you have a light blush on your cheeks, and it's so damn cute I can't help but cry anew, only this time it's out of the pure joy suffusing my entire being at this moment.

The moonlight from the window in falling just exactly where you are, and it makes you look so otherworldly that I can feel my breath leaving me.

You speak, your voice music of the most sweetest tones to my ears as you whisper in my ear, "Hi there, Shizu-chan," I feel like I'll die of happiness as that voice is so filled with kindness and love I forget any negative thoughts that I might have had.

I just held you close, and felt your warmth, for how long I don't know, but I do remember the comforting, life-giving warmth you exuded, the heavenly circle of your arms around me, and the silky softness of your hair as I ruffled it with my hands.

I still haven't managed to stop the tears, but that's the last thing on my mind now.

That is, until I notice you've been getting dimmer and dimmer, harder and harder to see for the past few minutes. Then I realize - it's time for you to go.

Whatever our meeting tonight was, it was a one time thing. You wouldn't come again. God only knows how or why it happened, but I got you back, exactly like I wished for, and now you would be going again.

I saw the sad acknowledgement of that in your eyes.

"No... Izaya... Don't do this to me... Please..." I don't know what I'm saying, I can't even form one coherent thought in my head, I'm just shocked and broken, all over again. Just like the day after you died. But I learnt to cope with that, I just 'forgot' about it, because it was just too damn painful to remember.

So I beg you, please don't go again.

It's not my choice, is what your eyes say. If not yours, then whose is it?

But actually, I'm okay with it.

"Take me with you," I breathe into the fur of your jacket, I can feel your body stiffen at my words but I don't give a damn, I'm never ever letting you go again. Not after all these years, not now and not ever.

You shake your head, it's obvious what you're going to say but I can see that you know it: it's not your choice not, it's mine.

Your eyes are worried.

They say so many things, like how you wish I wouldn't do this, like how you want me to move on and find someone else to make a life with, like how you're in love with me as well, and like how much you're hoping that I will choose to stay with the living for a while longer.

But, goddamn it, I have a reply for each and every one of those feelings. I know you wish I wouldn't do this, but you know full well that if you were in my place you'd do the same. You say you want me to move on with life, but how can I move on when I'm still in love with you? You say you love me, and I say I love you too. You say you want me to stay with the living for a bit longer, I say I want to stay with you a bit longer.

You're crying as well, at this point, but I'm not worried because I know it's because you're happy that you have someone who loves you, someone who remembers you and someone who you can trust.

We must look pathetic, two guys who are supposed to be constantly at each other's throats hugging and crying together like it's the only time they'll ever have.

But hell if I care.

If it was for you, I would walk through Hell and back with a wide smile on my face.

I smile, we both smile, as you're finally getting close to transparent and it's getting harder and harder to be able to discern you from my room, but I'm not worried at all because I'm doing the same thing.

We kiss, one chaste peck on the lips as we finally fade into non-existence, hand in hand and heart to heart.

All I know is bliss.

"Shinra! Is it really true?" Kadota burst through the door, breathing heavily as a result of the long sprint he'd taken. Kishitani Shinra did not smile his usual cheerful smile as he moved to answer his long-time friend.

"Yeah."

"But... Shizuo can't..."

The scientist's glasses glazed over; whether it happened with the knowledge of the man was another matter.

"He starved himself to death. His fridge is chock full of food, but he never ate any. He hadn't been sleeping either. I would have expected it not to be a happy way to die at all."

Kadota was confused by the last sentence; he cocked an eyebrow at his friend in enquiry.

"Look at him," Shinra said. "Just look at him."

Kadota went to the bedroom, where he saw the same old things: Shizuo's desk, overflowing with ready to be posted letters, the curtains to his window closed as always, and the bed itself, that now carried the limp weight of Heiwajima Shizuo.

What did Shinra mean, not a happy way to die? Of course it wasn't happy, or easy. Shizuo's body testified - he was thin, his bones were even beginning to stick out a bit, his hair was uncombed and rough.

"Look at his face," Shinra said, looking away himself at the same time.

Kadota did so. He saw the dark circles under Shizuo's eyes that told of long nights spent without sleep, he saw all the telltale signs of exhaustion and yet... he saw that Shizuo was smiling.

The smile was slight, barely noticeable unless you looked close enough but the joy it made Shizuo's face look like he was experiencing was nothing to be laughed at.

Kadota looked away, for some reason feeling uncomfortable. It was as if he was intruding.

The paper clenched in Shizuo's hand was one more of his love poems, directed at Izaya, as they all knew it would be, but this was by far the shortest he had ever written. The lines on the paper said only four lines, that for some reason made the hair on the back of Kadota's neck stand up. The paper said...

As day is born,  
And night dies,  
I weep with joy,  
We meet again.

A/N: Hello, thanks for reading this oneshot. Don't ask me why I wrote this, I just got so damn emotional after watching the beautiful AMV that someone made. I know it's not very good, but please be kind :3


End file.
